Untold Arsenal: Supporting the club, the manager and the team
"I believe the target of anything in life should be to do it so well that it becomes an art." A Wenger
By Tony Attwood I’ve introduced the topic of DraftKings before, and it is interesting to see how things are working out. Many DraftKings players had expected Alexis Sanchez to be one of the stars of the show – he was the highest owned Arsenal player in the day’s biggest contest for the opening fixture and …
Read More “So who exactly was the king of the show against Liverpool?”
By Tony Attwood During the summer of 2016 Untold set out a number of findings from research into such matters as the success of transfers, the impact of having a top scorer in the team, the efficacy of changing managers, and so on. The aim was to examine some of the potent myths propagated by …
Read More “Why the evidence of your own eyes does not reveal what is happening with Arsenal”
By Sir Hardly Anyone One might have imagined that with over 100 players now having been strongly linked with Arsenal transfers this summer just about every name has been used up. But now we have no name players arriving via a source known as @AFCArsenalHorse which is said by bloggettas to be a reliable Arsenal source. Although …
Read More “Transfer announcement imminent as no less than nine new targets emerge”
By Ima Counter, Professor of Numerological Sciences, University of UnCertain Things, Shetland. Two winners from last week’s Chelsea competition. OMG Arsenal gave us Calamitously Hopeless Eccentric Lackees Slavishly Enduring Abramovich While Jerry supplied Couldn’t Help Eden Lost Seeing Eva Around This week the competition is Man Utd – just think of a six word phrase where the letters start with the six letters M A N …
By Tony Attwood For the predictors of doom, always circling on the first day of the season, it was a godsend. Not that I particularly mean the result, but the fact that increasingly people do judge everything by the last couple of hours. And of course by the fact that increasingly even when faced with …
Read More “It’s that déjà vu thing all over again; why Kos was not rushed back.”
By Bulldog Drummond Thus, and therefore, it starts again, with nothing changed in the mind of the robots who write most of the football columns these days, although sadly, as we shall see Amy Lawrence, a highly respected and normally excellent writer has joined the majority in making assertions about Arsenal by utilising a wholly …
By Tim Charlesworth 2016/17 is going to be a fascinating season in so many ways, so before we begin I thought I would have a look at some the things that it might tell us. Of course, my primary interest is in answering the question: will Arsenal win, but I think there might be …
Read More “The cult of the manager: thoughts as the season begins.”
By Tony Attwood This is the time when the newspapers publish their summary of their predictions, and by and large they are all going with the same story. This is the season when Arsenal will drop out of the top four for the first time in 20 years, and will come below Tottenham for the …
Read More “The predictions for this coming season: and rather cheery ones they are too.”
By Tony Attwood It’s simple: spending money on players is supposedly a good thing which will take clubs up the league. But I am told, the figures Untold has been producing are misleading, because they only took in one season. It is spending over time that is important. So let’s see how it worked over …
By Tony Attwood So, now the papers are picking up one story. “Arsenal have agreed to buy Germany defender Shkodran Mustafi from Valencia, according to the player’s agent.” That is pretty much what each one is saying. There are still some finer points and details to be resolved however “according to reports,” like the fee. Valencia …
Read More “Finally agent says the deal is done. So maybe it is. But others are demand to leave.”
By Tony Attwood I do take pleasure in the fact that over the years Untold Arsenal has uncovered a number of issues in football which, had it not been for us, would probably have remained undisclosed, at least for a while. Walter’s work on refereeing is a perfect example: a major step forward in the …
Read More “Five Steps From Reality. Everything you need to know about today’s football transfers.”
By Jacko Jones Ever wondered what the full VIP experience at the Emirates Stadium feels like? Well it seems that one lucky fantasy football player will get the full red carpet experience courtesy of Arsenal’s Official 1-Day Fantasy Football Partner DraftKings. The Ultimate Arsenal Fan Experience includes two tickets in the luxury of an executive …
By Tony Attwood What the newspapers don’t say has these days become more interesting than what they do say. For example, the Independent is currently running the headline “Arsenal should look at United to see dangers of transfer failure” which might lead one to think that, at least in passing, they might consider the …
Read More “Tiny worries: how things might not be working out perfectly for Tottenham”
By Billy “the Dog” McGraw August: the headlines continue to be dominated by “Arsenal lose out to” in relation to the transfer market. No comparison is made between the amount spent by clubs and their league position. Stories abound in relation to Arsenal trying out “untried rookie” defender / midfielder / winger”. The media …
Read More “Arsenal 2016/17 – how will the season pan out for Arsenal, twitter and the media”
By Jacko Jones Now here is something Untold hasn’t covered before: fantasy football. But we are doing it now, because after a lot of looking around and courtesy of some awfully nice people at DraftKings, your fantasy footy experience is about to be transformed. Daily fantasy football from DraftKings offers the opportunity to win big …
Read More “Sick of waiting all season to switch out your expensive fantasy football stars?”
By Ima Counter, Professor of Numerological Sciences, University of UnCertain Things, Shetland. The BBC has the Gabriel story: “Arsenal defender Gabriel has been ruled out for six to eight weeks, increasing the likelihood of a bid for Valencia centre-back Shkodran Mustafi.” Meanwhile the Index of every player Arsenal has been linked with this summer sits …
Read More “Gabriel injury news as total number of players noted as coming to Arsenal reaches 98.”
THE BRICKFIELDS GUNNERS ‘ LIFE’S LESSONS 101 FOR ‘them’ – After posting a funny piece on the comment pages of UA at http://untold-arsenal.com/archives/54947#comments,re : LIFE SKILL CLASS – HOW TO SPEAK TO WOMEN and followed it with one about LESSONS FOR ‘them’ as to how they should behave towards AKBs, it felt incomplete somewhat for me, so …
Read More “THE BRICKFIELDS GUNNERS ‘ LIFE’S LESSONS 101 FOR ‘them’”
By Sir Hardly Anyone. “If people get new information that is in contrast to what they believe then they tend to neglect this new information for as long as possible.” Yes my little ducklings, it is getting close to the sharp end of the sharp ended thing. Which means we need just eight …
By Don McMahon While surfing Arsenal.com, I was struck by a statement that Wenger said when asked about paying high fees for a striker or other transfers. He said, ¨The money is never a problem if you have to pay what is requested. The price of a player is down to four ingredients. One is …
Read More “Past, present and future: how Wenger’s approach to transfers is bearing fruit”
By Bulldog Drummond Talk of the new season being just around the bend means talk of injuries – but this time not so much of Arsenal injuries but of Manchester Airport. For quite amazingly, in the few days after Untold’s complaints that the media are still banging on about Arsenal’s side being decimated year after …
Read More “Manchester Airport vs The Arsenal, and that means a lot of talk about INJURIES”
By Tony Attwood You can be forgiven for either a) not knowing that the player loan system has changed or will change, or b) thinking it has all been by-passed by a crafty FA outsmarting Fifa. But new regulations there are, and as far as I can see the story that England would not be …
By Tony Attwood It was just over a month ago that Untold published the first article in what became (somewhat to my surprise) a long running series. The headline was “Why so much hate?” and it reflected upon the language used in football. In a later article we picked up on the phrase “toxic rhetoric” …
Read More “Why so much hate and angst about Arsenal? We’ve found the answer.”
By Tony Attwood There’s a big problem with pre-season friendlies. Win easily and those people who very sadly (for them) are unable to find joy and happiness in football (or perhaps in life) denounce it as only a friendly. Unexpectedly lose, and all hell breaks loose as suddenly instead of it only being a …
By Bulldog Drummond Article corrected at 6.40pm; the original line ups got mixed in editing and one team got placed inside another. Sorry. So here is where we have got to. Two fixtures over the weekend and then its downhill all the way, at least according to those with emotional contagion. I think that phrase …
Read More “The Vikings vs The Arsenal. They have Thor and the longboats. We’ve got the gunpowder.”
By Tony Attwood I’ve been trying to unravel the issue of why football journalists and pundits constantly publish or say either misleading or on occasion wholly untrue statements about football and in doing this I’ve given a range of examples. But yesterday I was reminded just how far away I am from explaining to many readers …
Read More “Why the notion that Arsenal desperately need to buy a centre forward is nonsense.”
